Senate May Disclose Who Is Holding Up Legislation

Members Traditionally Have Been Able To Secretly Keep Bills They Oppose From Reaching The Floor

April 12, 1998|By JUDY HOLLAND Hearst Newspapers

WASHINGTON — The Senate is examining whether to junk an ancient practice that allows an individual senator to secretly halt floor action on legislation.

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., appointed a 10-member task force to review Senate procedures after some senators pressed him for more openness in the workings of the chamber.

After the group met for the first time a week ago, Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah, chairman of the panel, said some senators were resisting attempts to require public identification of any senator who places a ``hold'' on a bill or nomination.

Such a hold freezes the matter from coming to the full Senate and is often used to stall a measure or kill it.

In practice, any Republican senator who wants to place a hold quietly tells Lott, or a Democratic senator notifies Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D. The leader is bound by a tradition of silence to keep that senator's name a secret, from other senators or reporters or the public.

``Some senators say they don't want their names known because the public doesn't understand,'' Bennett said. ``They prefer people back home not be told because it looks like they're doing something underhanded.''

Indeed, Senate critics of the practice say it is more than perception _ they say the hold is a sneaky parliamentary gimmick that thwarts full Senate consideration of important issues.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said the hold ``is one of the senators' most significant powers,'' and that the anonymity amounts to ``power without responsibility.''

``It doesn't pass the smell test,'' Wyden said. ``I don't think you can stand up and defend the ideas that issues of such importance should be done in private.''

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, another leader of the move to require public identification of senators who ask for holds, adds: ``Sunshine is the best disinfectant.''

The holds procedure began a century ago as a courtesy to senators unable to get to the Senate floor for a vote or a debate. It was intended as a favor from Senate leaders who would postpone taking up a measure until the requesting senator arrived. But over the years it has developed into a tool to delay or block bills or nominations.

Sometimes several senators join in ``revolving holds,'' in a kind of tag team to stall a vote on a bill or nomination. That forces senators seeking to remove a hold, or reporters trying to figure out who placed it, to engage in a kind of hide-and-seek game to figure out who is currently blocking legislation.

In 1996, a group of senators placed a revolving hold on health care legislation by Sens. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and Nancy Kassebaum, R-Kan., which kept it off the Senate floor for six months.

The bill conferred the right on individuals to get health insurance even if they had an existing medical condition. It also gave them the right to individuals to take their insurance with them when they change jobs. The measure eventually passed.

Often senators place holds on a measure to gain leverage on unrelated matters, which can provoke retaliation in the form of unrelated counterholds.

Wyden and Grassley said public disclosure is crucial so pressure can be brought against any senator who is blocking legislation.

Cochran said it would be ``a burdensome and onerous responsibility'' to require senators to acknowledge when they have placed holds on legislation.

``It's simply a right of a senator to communicate his interests to the majority leader,'' Cochran said. ``He doesn't have to disclose that. He shouldn't be required to.''

Moseley-Braun also said she wants to preserve a senator's right to anonymously block legislation. ``I want to maintain the traditions of the Senate,'' Moseley-Braun said.

Bennett's task force will meet again after Congress returns April 20 from spring recess before issuing recommendations to Lott.

Bennett said the group will also review the effect of a hold during the last 24 hours of a Congress, when it has ``a much bigger impact.'' A hold lasts until a two-year congressional session concludes. If a hold is placed on legislation in the waning days of a session, it can effectively kill it because there is not enough time to figure out who is behind it or how to get it lifted.

When a new session begins, senators then must start from scratch, moving a measure through the labyrinth of the legislative process _ rewriting it, holding hearings and gathering co-sponsors.

``For a relatively short period of time, there can be a justification,'' Bennett said. ``But the long-term last-all-Congress kind of hold _ that makes me nervous.''

Bennett said some members place holds on bills or nominations simply because they want to review something in greater detail.

``The question is how do we separate senators who have a legitimate reason for a temporary delay from senators who have in fact come close to abuse by putting a blanket hold on everything?'' Bennett said.

Bennett said he himself has ``never put a hold on anything I wasn't willing to make public.'' Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said senators should announce publicly when they place a hold.

``If you have the guts to put one on, you ought to have the guts to say you did it,'' Hatch said.